Rumours and news about DC Titles: 2022 edition

[Digifiend]

Yeah Constantine was trying to cheat and summon the power of Shazam to defeat Trigon and on their little adventure to get the staff of the wizard Shazam Cassandra grabbed the staff and ended up becoming Black Cain (work in progress that name).

Makes sense that she actually has Black Adam's powers and not Billy's, considering Mary is still there.

[sifighter]

Makes sense that she actually has Black Adam's powers and not Billy's, considering Mary is still there.

....I just thought that Black Cain was a nice nod to Black Adam instead of calling her Black Bat. No one in the comic actually calls her that

[Frontier]

Yeah Constantine was trying to cheat and summon the power of Shazam to defeat Trigon and on their little adventure to get the staff of the wizard Shazam Cassandra grabbed the staff and ended up becoming Black Cain (work in progress that name).

That sounds...pretty random.

[sifighter]

That sounds...pretty random.

Well the plot leading up to that is that Trigon was PO’d because of the undead that he was not getting souls in hell so he decided to just annihilate the undead. Unfortunately our heroes found out that a cure for the virus was possible and needed to stop Trigon to save the lives of all the infected. John Constantine went around trying to get his hand on as many high powered magic items as he could, and one was the staff of the Wizard Shazam. The others was the spear of destiny, helmet of fate, Ragman’s cloak, and deadman’s power....but that failed so Jon held Trigon at bay for a minute while John became deadman inhabited Trigon’s body and killed both of them (John Constantine and Trigon, not Superman) with the spear of destiny.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Batman sells and has sold for a very long time. People keeping saying that DC is going to reach a saturation point, hell I myself said as much in the past, but it never happens. People just can’t get enough Batman. And these books aren’t all coming out in one month, although why they announced them all so early ahead of time is beyond me.

Agreed, which is why DC relies so heavily upon Bat-books, but prior corporate/editorial regimes were smarter about how much they relied upon that franchise. The current one is leaning on it far more than any other in DC's entire publishing history. That's ill-advised when it allows the other properties DC owns to lie dormant when they are customers willing to pay for something other than Bat-books, but aren't being served.

It's also dumb in regards to what DC's main purpose is in terms of the corporate pecking order. Their job is to create stories that could potentially be used in outside media. If DC is almost exclusively focused on producing content for Bat-books, which have so thoroughly mined for decades now, that doesn't leave many opportunities for other experiments that could potentially pay off.

Granted, I'm sure there's enormous pressure being put on DC right now to produce profits fast, regardless of the long-term consequences

[Vordan]

Agreed, which is why DC relies so heavily upon Bat-books, but prior corporate/editorial regimes were smarter about how much they relied upon that franchise. The current one is leaning on it far more than any other in DC's entire publishing history. That's ill-advised when it allows the other properties DC owns to lie dormant when they are customers willing to pay for something other than Bat-books, but aren't being served.

It's also dumb in regards to what DC's main purpose is in terms of the corporate pecking order. Their job is to create stories that could potentially be used in outside media. If DC is almost exclusively focused on producing content for Bat-books, which have so thoroughly mined for decades now, that doesn't leave many opportunities for other experiments that could potentially pay off.

Granted, I'm sure there's enormous pressure being put on DC right now to produce profits fast, regardless of the long-term consequences

Are there? For all the bitching I have yet to see people put their money where their mouth is when it comes to these smaller books. People complained Kara didn’t have a Supergirl ongoing but the sales for Tom King’s Supergirl mini was fairly modest despite positive critic and fan reviews from what I saw. And that was a fairly high profile team on a B-Lister. Did anyone buy or care about Jurgens Blue & Gold? I don’t think DC is leaving all that much money on the table truth be told.

I hope the Jaime Blue Beetle mini sells well but that’s a another character who rarely performs well in sales despite his push in animation and video games.

[Morgoth]

It doesn't look like DC has a choice if the majority is only buying Batman. Especially with all these changes with WB / Discovery and so on, the publishing house, in principle, exists at a constant risk of further reforms, cuts or maybe even closure, who knows, now the situation is quite unpredictable.
We may not like it, but Batman is the only thing keeping them going. Unfortunately, people who complain about too many of his comics either don't buy other characters, or there aren't enough of them.

[HsssH]

When New 52 launched there was good amount of variety. Even more was offered with DCYou. Almost all of those titles had bad (or even terrible) sales.

[MajorHoy]

Are there? For all the bitching I have yet to see people put their money where their mouth is when it comes to these smaller books. People complained Kara didn’t have a Supergirl ongoing but the sales for Tom King’s Supergirl mini was fairly modest despite positive critic and fan reviews from what I saw. And that was a fairly high profile team on a B-Lister...

Y'know, I might have considered buying a comic book starring Supergirl.

But not that one. Didn't like direction / won't spend money with Tom King as the writer.

[OBrianTallent]

Are there? For all the bitching I have yet to see people put their money where their mouth is when it comes to these smaller books. People complained Kara didn’t have a Supergirl ongoing but the sales for Tom King’s Supergirl mini was fairly modest despite positive critic and fan reviews from what I saw. And that was a fairly high profile team on a B-Lister. Did anyone buy or care about Jurgens Blue & Gold? I don’t think DC is leaving all that much money on the table truth be told.

I hope the Jaime Blue Beetle mini sells well but that’s a another character who rarely performs well in sales despite his push in animation and video games.

To be fair...Tom King has burned a lot of bridges with fans in his overly wrought and deconstructive style. People are tired of his constant need to work out his own demons on the page in every single book he writes.

[Vordan]

Y'know, I might have considered buying a comic book starring Supergirl.

But not that one. Didn't like direction / won't spend money with Tom King as the writer.

To be fair...Tom King has burned a lot of bridges with fans in his overly wrought and deconstructive style. People are tired of his constant need to work out his own demons on the page in every single book he writes.

I know people hate King but he didn’t Heroes In Crisis Kara, and I also mentioned Jurgens Blue & Gold mini. Jurgens is inoffensive and he was writing two characters who are fan favorites with a fantastic artist drawing. Did anyone buy that? I barely saw any discussion of that book. The Aqua books have had really poor sales despite the complaints about Aquaman not having a solo (I didn’t think the books have been all that great except for Kaldur’s but even the first issue sales were terrible, so people just didn’t seem that interested or excited off the bat). The Milestone books haven’t sold great, GL sales are ok but far, far less than the glory days, Suicide Squad was fairly good until the final crossover but did not sell well, The Flash has been a fan favorite giving Wally fans exactly what they want but the sales on that have been tepid, WW’s sales have been in the same 30-40k range as always as have Action despite both books getting a lot of praise from their respective fanbase (Action is my favorite DC book), One Star Squadron was an enjoyable Mark Russel comic starring C-Listers with weak sales, etc, etc.

All these books and the only thing that seems to actually sell are Batman, Tom King minis, Tynion’s BL stuff, and the Dark Crisis lead up minis.

[Hypo]

To be fair...Tom King has burned a lot of bridges with fans in his overly wrought and deconstructive style. People are tired of his constant need to work out his own demons on the page in every single book he writes.

Eh, there is a vocal online presence that dislikes his stuff but that exists for pretty much any big name creator.

If King was no longer a draw I'd expect Batman/Catwoman to be tanking given the erratic as hell release schedule and the rather jarring artist switch for a while there. Instead the latest issue was the 18th best selling comic book in April and the 5th best selling DC book based off the icv2 data (standard caveat on all sales numbers being unreliable post-DC's diamond exit).

[BatmanJones]

If King was no longer a draw...

If King was no longer a draw DC wouldn't keep giving him so incredibly many projects. As Vordan has been saying here, DC doesn't have the luxury of publishing a bunch of books that don't sell since they were bought by corporate overlords. That's why there's so much Batman. He sells. And that's why there's so much Tom King too. DC can't afford to give so much work to a writer that's roundly hated by fans. This forum and other comic book forums are not representative of fans' feelings generally. That's obvious from what's already been said about poor sales for anything to do with Aquaman, Blue and Gold, and even Wonder Woman.

Fans here and elsewhere online complained for years about there not being more WW content. Now there's tons of it and people are not buying it so soon we'll be back to less WW stuff. DC is a business owned by a giant corporation. They're not being mean to fans; they need to make money or they'll close.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Are there? For all the bitching I have yet to see people put their money where their mouth is when it comes to these smaller books. People complained Kara didn’t have a Supergirl ongoing but the sales for Tom King’s Supergirl mini was fairly modest despite positive critic and fan reviews from what I saw. And that was a fairly high profile team on a B-Lister. Did anyone buy or care about Jurgens Blue & Gold? I don’t think DC is leaving all that much money on the table truth be told.

I hope the Jaime Blue Beetle mini sells well but that’s a another character who rarely performs well in sales despite his push in animation and video games.

Supergirl has always struggled to sell. And the goes for Blue & Gold. And it didn't help that neither of those books were particularly compelling. I dropped both after the first issue. I can't imagine I was the only one who found them dull as hell.

That said, I'm glad they took a chance with them.

[NathanS]

Though... how does it work that King's stuff is clearly selling very well and is a draw... but then turn around and complain about people not buying his stuff and so that's proof there's no demand for anything other than Batman? Like at beast you can make the two lineups by him being more of a draw than what little is left in the DC stable of writers. And at this point, the argument seems to be. "Batman is the only thing DC has made that can and will sell nothing can change this."